Hanson: There is no California

Driving across California is like going from Mississippi to Massachusetts without ever crossing a state line.

Consider the disconnects: California’s combined income and sales taxes are among the nation’s highest, but the state’s deficit is still about $16 billion. It’s estimated that more than 2,000 upper-income Californians are leaving per week to flee high taxes and costly regulations, yet California wants to raise taxes even higher; its business climate already ranks near the bottom of most surveys. Its teachers are among the highest paid on average in the nation, but its public school students consistently test near the bottom of the nation in both math and science.

The state’s public employees enjoy some of the nation’s most generous pensions and benefits, but California’s retirement systems are underfunded by about $300 billion. The state’s gas taxes — at over 49 cents per gallon — are among the highest in the nation, but its once unmatched freeways, like 101 and 99, for long stretches have degenerated into potholed, clogged nightmares unchanged since the early 1960s.

The state wishes to borrow billions of dollars to develop high-speed rail, beginning with a little-traveled link between Fresno and Corcoran — a corridor already served by money-losing Amtrak. Apparently, coastal residents like the idea of European high-speed rail — as long as noisy and dirty construction does not begin in their backyards.

As gasoline prices soar, California chooses not to develop millions of barrels of untapped oil and even more natural gas off its shores and beneath its interior. Home to bankrupt green companies like Solyndra, California has mandated that a third of all the energy provided by state utilities soon must come from renewable energy sources — largely wind and solar, which presently provide about 11 percent of its electricity and almost none of its transportation fuel.

How to explain the seemingly inexplicable? There is no California, which is a misnomer. There is no such state. Instead there are two radically different cultures and landscapes with little in common, each equally dysfunctional in quite different ways. Apart they are unworldly, together a disaster.

A postmodern narrow coastal corridor runs from San Diego to Berkeley, where the weather is ideal, the gentrified affluent make good money, and values are green and left-wing. This Shangri-La is juxtaposed to a vast impoverished interior, from the southern desert to the northern Central Valley, where life is becoming premodern.

On the coast, blue-chip universities like Cal Tech, Berkeley, Stanford and UCLA in pastoral landscapes train the world’s doctors, lawyers, engineers and businesspeople. In the hot interior of blue-collar Sacramento, Turlock, Fresno and Bakersfield, well over half the incoming freshman in the California State University system must take remedial math and science classes.

In postmodern Palo Alto or Santa Monica, a small cottage costs more than $1 million. Two hours away, in premodern and now-bankrupt Stockton, a bungalow the same size goes for less than $100,000.

In the interior, unemployment in many areas peaks at over 15 percent. The theft of copper wire is reaching epidemic proportions. Thousands of the shrinking middle class flee the interior for the coast or nearby no-income-tax states. To fathom the state’s nearly unbelievable statistics — as the state population grew by 10 million from the mid-1980s to 2005, its number of Medicaid recipients increased by 7 million during that period; one-third of the nation’s welfare recipients now reside in California — visit the state’s hinterlands.

But in the Never-Never Land of Apple, Facebook, Google, Hollywood and the wine country, millions live in an idyllic paradise. Coastal Californians can afford to worry about the state’s trivia — as their legislators seek to outlaw foie gras, shut down irrigation projects to save the 3-inch delta smelt, and allow children to have legally recognized multiple parents.

But in the less feel-good interior, crippling regulations curb timber, gas and oil, and farm production. For the most part, the rules are mandated by coastal utopians who have little idea where the gas for their imported cars comes from, or how the redwood is cut for their decks, or who grows the ingredients for their Mediterranean lunches of arugula, olive oil and pasta.

On the coast, it’s politically incorrect to talk of illegal immigration. In the interior, residents see first-hand the bankrupting effects on schools, courts and health care when millions arrive illegally without English-language fluency or a high school diploma — and send back billions of dollars in remittances to Mexico and other Latin American countries.

The drive from Fresno to Palo Alto takes three hours, but you might as well be rocketing from Earth to the moon.

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Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author of the just-released “The End of Sparta.” You can reach him by emailing author@victorhanson.com.

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California alone has the worlds fifth largest economy. I lived there for a time and if I could afford it I would leave Florida 5 years ago. The writer has not taken in many facts at all. For instance California is the busiest seaport state in the nation, the biggest agricultural state in the nation. Every major corporation in the country is HQ in California, and every corporation in the country has outsourced California's jobs to the other side of the Pacific ! Now add that with the Earth Quakes and the Seasonal Fires that create mass distruction on a frequent basis, the rich people who want thier rebuilds while expecting to pass portions of the premiums on to the unaffected. Then add the corporations skirting the laws who recruit illegals to do Wal Mart work. What can one expect when the economy tanks and Gov's like Ah-nold and mayor Eastwood get elected ! They are good at movies but thats about it, Eastwood quit, and Ah-nold was having sexcapes with the maid, and don't believe Maria didn't know or wasn't in on the fun. California, New York and Michigan are the three key places in our economy!

Are the fourth most important part of our Economy. Texas Oil companies are notorious for hiring India indians instead of Americans to do the work, The Gulf is a very important part of our economy. We keep giving tax breaks to corporations and they spend every dime in political contributions to convince you that they need to hire 2 dollar stooges, because YOU are getting paid too much, and half of you are too dim to get it.

We dont need to have a war and Nation build Afghanistan for Lithium and Emeralds ! We have a Free Market Right? So let the Corporations pay to mine the goodies and sell them to us ! We don't need soldiers to steal it !

I'm not sure he reads the lengthy commentaries of folks like Hanson and Sowell. He just likes the headlines their commentaries usually illicit. But, I'll use this commentary to answer two questions he asked me. They were: "And Doc Mac are you invoking the aid of God? Well Doc, are you calling Dr. Dinesh D'Souza ignorant, misinformed, or just uninformed? He like you is also a BELIEVER!"

First, I was just using a common expression when I said "God help us if Romney and Ryan are elected". I don't think God is going to weigh in on this issue or any political/policy issue. He leaves us to deal with our issues on our own whatever the circumstances. That is why I believe like the Buffetts, Gates, Clintons, and Obamas of the world, that we are our brothers' keeper. Those of us that can, should pay back to the national and international community to aid those less fortunate than us.

Second, I don't think all conservatives are uneducated or uninformed. Dinesh D'Souza is like Thomas Sowell and Victor David Hanson in the sense that he has been a well paid hack working for right wing think tanks doing the bidding of the Koch brothers, the Mellons' and all those other wealthy families that want to ensure that politicians keep supporting the policies that serve their self interests.
Do they really believe in the positions they promote? Who knows? What we do know is that they preach the same policies that Herbert Hoover, another educated man supported. What he and Coolidge gave us was the greatest depression in our history. Thanks to Obama and some other smart people in power, we adverted, at least temporarily, what could have been a second economic disaster that might have surpassed the depths of the great depression.